What I learned from Mr. Ashwani Kumar at Nortel

Continuing from last week, I would like to share yet another lesson from my Nortel days, this time from Mr. Ashwani Kumar, who was my hiring manager. I did mention a bit about him in an earlier blog that shared a lesson from Mr. James Demers. My association with Ashwani was short as he left within three months of my joining Nortel.

Don’t be a Post Box

It was the early days of my joining Nortel (less than two weeks), and I was still adjusting to cultural differences between my previous company, Power Grid and Nortel, A Canadian MNC. As I completed my induction (not a very formal one). I was assigned a task by Ashwani, in fact, he just forwarded an email request from one of the sales guys for a solution presentation, to me. I completed the task and shared the solution documents back with Ashwani. He forwarded them to the sales guy.

When I was sent another email by Ashwani, I promptly completed the work and replied back to Ashwani. This time, he called me to his room, as asked me, “Do I look like a Post Box to You?” I was taken aback y this question out of the blue. He asked me to reply to the salesperson directly, and only direct emails to him in case I needed some inputs from him.

As a manager, we must not just become a Post Box, we must add value as an individual as well and not just be a sum of our teams or take credit for work done by them. I hope that all of you become great managers and still generate value as an individual.

Stay tuned for more next week!